


Komorebi

by odiko_ptino



Series: Featured Character: Aphrodite [2]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: vitiligo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 21:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17030427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odiko_ptino/pseuds/odiko_ptino
Summary: The Goddess of Beauty decides what her skin will look like.





	Komorebi

It is many, many years, and it is many, many miles from Hellas, when she finally hears the word: the concept, identified at last.

Komorebi.

————-

The sea is Aphrodite’s birthplace. Long before she emerges from it as the goddess of love and beauty, she is only a pre-formed Titaness of the waves – a potential entity, but one without form or purpose yet.

In the centuries to follow, many forget that her formative years were spent drifting as seafoam, watching in delight as the people and creatures of the depths carried out their lives.  The wild and passionate romance of Queen Amphitrite and her suitor Poseidon.  The many adventures and dramatics of the Nereids and the sea-gods.  The mystery of the god-child hidden in a grotto, where he creates works of unspeakable beauty.

Like many of the ocean’s denizens, the mystery of Hephaestus tantalizes.  She tries to imagine what creations he has wrought.  The items’ purposes are of little interest to her – as seafoam, she mostly only drifts and witnesses and dreams.  She has no use for trinkets beyond the pleasure they give her to look at them.  So, of the mysterious treasures: what do they look like? What colors, what shapes?  

Her imagination typically will call up her favorite sight within the wide ocean: caustic optics. This is the beautiful patchwork pattern laid out upon the ocean floor, the result of the light hitting the perpetually shifting surface of the water and refracting into bright lines, like shifting tiles.  The natural phenomenon is strikingly lovely, and has a calming effect on most. Poseidon can often be found dozing on the sea-bed, caustic patterns drifting over his skin and the sand around him, broken only by the quick shadows of colorful schools of fish.  

This sort of beauty is no less lovely for being extremely common – Helios travels the sky daily, after all, and the irregular surface of the sea is a constant.  But this started to shape Aphrodite for who she was – seeing beauty in common things, as well as irregularities.  

The famous painting of her birth – standing in a shell and ascending to the shore in a glory of attendants and beauty – is a little misleading.  Her first step upon the beach was alone, no witnesses except a few gulls.  

The first thing she does is to gaze up at Helios – to behold the sun, unfiltered by the salty water. He gleams, shining in the sky, and stares back at her, returning her wave tentatively.

The sky is blue…. Dotted with a few clouds here and there, and with Helios of course, and a few other stray weather gods drifting through on their business.  But overall, much clearer up here, and  _much_  more permanent.

She clothes herself in seafoam and begins walking towards the trees, legs unsteady upon the solid earth, form shifting as she decides upon the shape she likes.

Unlike most other gods, she has the luxury of choosing her ‘base’ form.  All gods can shapeshift, of course, but being born of seafoam means she is not tied to a base form she must return to.  Still, after watching the Nereids for so long, she has decided that she must assume a semipermanent shape, if only that her friends can recognize her quickly.  

Female, then, because she feels more female than anything else.  She wants to be soft, warm, inviting – her form becomes short and plump, her hair long and wavy like the strands of seaweeds in the water….

Hmm.  The color doesn’t feel right, though.  Kelp-green is too cool, too dark… her hair quickly rainbows through a selection of colors before she settles on a soft pink hue. Not terribly common within the sea, and nearly always associated with the soft, squishy jellyfishes or sponges.

Her eyes, she keeps a sharp, bright sea-green.  It provides a nice contrast and will remind the beholder of her birthplace, her secret wildness.

The skin color leaves her undecided for a while.  The local humans’ skin is a palette of mostly middle-to-darker tones, but she’s seen that there’s a fair variety to choose from.  

She goes through the skin tones idly, not feeling satisfied with any of them, and sighs, sitting upon the soft grass beneath the trees, and it’s then that she sees it.

Helios is still overhead. His rays are blunted through the leaves overhead, casting a shadow on the ground.  And yet… the god of the west wind – Zephyrus? – drifts past, rustling the tree leaves as he goes, and turns to smile at her.  She returns the smile, wanting to make a good first impression, but quickly turns her attention back to the ground where something astonishing has happened.

The sunlight filters through the tree-leaves and shifts, overlapping patterns of light and shadow changing constantly as the leaves move and allow bursts of sun through.  The breeze dies down and the commotion slows – but doesn’t stop.  The leaves are constantly shifting, even if only in tiny increments, leaving the pattern different every time she looks.  

It does the same to her skin, as she looks on in delight.  A pattern of light and shadow, making her skin two different colors at once.

She has no word for it, and neither does anyone else that she meets for some time.  Many centuries later, in a land called Nippon – she learns of a word that describes this phenomenon.  Komorebi, the play of light through tree leaves.

It’s similar to the caustic optics she loves – a shifting pattern of light upon a surface, and yet, unique to the land environment.  There could be no clearer sign, this bridging of her old world and her new.

When the Olympians arrive to investigate this new Titaness who has emerged from the waves, she has decided upon her skin at last – mottled tones of pale and dark, irregularly patterned, a testament to the first beautiful thing she saw when she arrived in the world as the goddess of love and beauty.


End file.
